Stay on target

The commercial, released on Friday, highlights the power of Face ID on iPhone X.

But it also turns the spotlight on a notification flaw that’s been plaguing users for months.

First spotted in November by 9to5Mac writer Benjamin Mayo, the glitch allows text to escape the expanding Face ID notification bubble.

(For the uninitiated: Apple’s new technology hides the contents of notifications until the owner explicitly looks at and unlocks their device. So when someone sends a text, for example, the display simply reads “iMessage”; glance at the screen to reveal more details.)

Mayo reported the almost imperceptible flaw to Cupertino “months ago.”

Apple did not immediately respond to Geek’s request for comment.

“I think it got closed as dupe [a duplicate file],” Mayo wrote in a Friday tweet. “I’m way more concerned that this was signed off for the commercial.”

Not a typical headline-making error, this animation bug is one of many that have been piling up over the years.

Tech expert Chris Pirillo has been documenting various iOS issues—from UI problems and vanishing docks to rotation issues and misaligned text in the App Store.

“iOS has been performing in an inexplicably jarring manner since iOS 7,” Pirillo wrote in an open letter to chief Apple software engineer Craig Federighi. “Iterations don’t seem to help much, major or minor.

“Let me put it to you this way: Had the first iPhone operated like I’ve seen the iPhone 7 operate, I would never have been a perennial purchaser,” he continued. “I never would have considered iOS a possibility.”

Cupertino may finally be listening: According to The Verge, Tim Cook & Co. are reportedly delaying major operating system additions to focus on reliability and performance in iOS 12.

Keep an eye on this summer’s Worldwide Developers Conference for more details on the next-gen software.